


The Measure of a Man

by hitlikehammers



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), Banter, Character Study, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Post-Star Trek Beyond, Star Trek Beyond, Star Trek Beyond Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 18:42:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7585681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m thinking it’s high time you and I had a little chat.”</p><p>Jim’s jaw drops open, and he can feel his eyes stretch wide enough to damn well bug out of his skull just a touch at that, as he stares up at the man straddling him, thighs tight against Jim’s hips where he lifts back a bit to hover just far enough away not to touch, not to give any relief to Jim in his time of <i>need</i>.</p><p>“<i>Now</i>?”</p><p>Bones smirks. </p><p>“Yes, right fucking now seems like a perfect time."</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Or: The hard-won realization of who Jim Kirk really is.</i><br/> </p><p>  <b>SPOILERS FOR STAR TREK BEYOND.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Measure of a Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weepingnaiad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad/gifts).



> Because _some people_ are very insistent when I tell them I never intended to post a thing, and they feel differently. So then I am persuaded and I gift them said thing.
> 
> I mean, just. SOME PEOPLE. <333

“I’m thinking it’s high time you and I had a little chat.”

Jim’s jaw drops open, and he feel his eyes stretch wide enough to damn well bug out of his skull just a touch at that, as he stares up at the man straddling him, thighs tight against Jim’s hips where he lifts back a bit to hover just far enough away not to touch, not to give any relief to Jim in his time of fucking _need_.

“ _Now_?”

“Yes, right fucking now seems like a perfect time,” Bones smirks, and settles just a little bit further back on his haunches, squeezes Jim’s hips in silent censure when Jim tries to follow, tries to angle his straining dick below Bones’ own, just for a _second_. 

“You’re not going anywhere,” Bones ticks off his reasoning, calm as anything. “I’ve got your undivided attention.”

“You’re a sadist,” and he is. Jim’s lover, his partner, his best friend in the endlessness of the universe: Leonard McCoy is a _sadist_. 

“You took a fucking _oath_!” Jim doesn’t whine, exactly. He’s a starship Captain. 

They don’t _whine_.

“You think this is _harm_ , Jim?” Bones snorts. “You ain’t _seen_ me do harm.”

And Jim growls at that, because he thinks he’s had enough of this shit—his cock’s certainly over it, and he does his best to maneuver out, to flip them over and take the reins: but here’s the thing. Jim’s no wilting flower: he’s strong. Powerful.

But his knowledge of human anatomy will never match the good doctor’s. And the good doctor, as currently established, is actually a _sadist_ doctor, who thwarts Jim’s attempt to seize control of the situation, allowing friction against Jim’s length for the kind of deliberate half a second meant to make him ache all the fucking more.

God _damn_ him. 

“Which brings us back to the topic at hand,” Bones picks up idly; Jim just scowls.

“Very much _not_ ,” Jim bites out, canting his hips up but unable to press against anything but air; “at _hand_ —”

“Shut it, you ain’t dying,” Bones cuts him off, wholly unsympathetic. Bastard. “I know when you’re dying. Do you know how many missions have actually ended where I haven’t had to save your sorry ass from almost certain death, or worse?”

Jim sighs. They don’t talk about _worse_ , and Jim knows he’s given Bones his fair share of scares in the medbay, but it’s not like it’s _always_.

“Most?” he ventures; it’s gotta be that more often than not, they manage to get through unscathed-ish.

Bones eyes him. Bones eyes him with that thoroughly unimpressed look that only he knows how to give.

“Most- _un_ -fucking-often.” 

Jim would beg to differ, honestly, but quite frankly he’s on the cusp of a different kind of begging. A much less composed sort of begging, really.

He’s real fucking close.

“This isn’t _actually_ about you single-handed ensuring my cardiovascular health in trying to give me a goddamn heart attack every fucking second,” Bones carries on, moving casually to brace his weight against the vee of Jim’s groin, one open palm splayed at each side. “I mostly got over that part in the first year.”

“Good,” Jim gasps, hell: _whimpers_ , because yes, even starship captains whimper when they can feel their lover’s heat against their fucking balls, but can’t feel the _touch_ : “That’s good.”

“I just wanna know,” Bones drawls, and god if that doesn’t twitch to the point of pain in Jim’s already aching cock, that slow-honey sound drawing every vowel like a bow string; Jim feels how wet he’s got at the tip and he just fucking _needs_ goddamnit, and why is Bones still _talking_?

“You figure out who he is?” Bones asks, raising a teasing brow as he addresses the question to Jim pointedly: “Vice _Admiral_.”

“I turned that down,” Jim growls out, and he can feel the muscles in his lower back start to pull past their limits with how bad he’s trying to grind up into Bones’ body; he knows better, though. He won’t get what he wants until Bones gets his answer.

Fucking _fine_. 

“Who _who_ is?”

“Jim.”

Jim rolls his eyes. “Yeah?”

Bones shakes his head, smiles a little, and repeats slowly, deliberately: 

“Who _Jim_ is.”

And it floods right back in Jim’s mind, the whiskey and the shadows and one year older and the words traded in the dark: who is Jim. Just _Jim_.

And Jim’s a mess right now, if he’s honest: panting and needing and aching and sprawled bare and blown wide under his lover—and that’s Jim.

Jim’s also a man who’ll take a dare and win it past its due; until it suits him like he planned it himself in the first place.

Jim’s a man who needs grounding, rooting: but he’s not a man who needs soil to stand firm upon. He was born in the stars, and that’s where he grows. He’d thought maybe he was simpler than that; like other people. 

He’s not.

Jim’s a man who will give his life for the people he loves. Jim’s a man who’ll give his life for people, full stop. Jim’s a man who’s smart, but knows his limits—but also knows that limits are just for the intangible unknowns, where the shadows haven’t lifted yet.

Jim’s a man who understands why the enemy hurts, understands what it _means_ to hurt, but won’t let them win and spread that hurt to others. Jim’s a man who calls his mother on his birthday, on her worst day. Jim’s a man whose stepfather works on the Yorktown and comes down to drink him a toast because people grow up.

Jim is a man who’s also a boy. He never forgot how to hotwire a bike. How to ride it like a madman. How to leap and find a foothold only once he’s in midair.

Jim still likes fucking classical music, so sue him.

Jim is a man who values family, and knows intimately that home isn’t a place, but a feeling. Sometimes a people. A person.

Some light in the all the dark.

Jim’s a man who’s learning what it means to harvest that light, for those places, those times where the unknown spreads wide and thick.

Jim is a man who knows that the only reason to love a ship is for the people on it. The only reason to call a thing a home is because of what it holds. Jim’s a man who loves his crew.

“You know what?”

Jim’s a man _in love_ with Leonard H. McCoy.

“I think,” Jim smiles, and if his pulse was pounding with need already, it’s a fuller thing now, somehow; “I think I did, yeah.”

And Jim watches his Bones smile back: and yeah.

Yeah: he knows who he is.

“Good,” Bones says through his smile. “Glad to hear it.”

“Glad enough to get a move on, Doctor?” Jim hints, bending a knee just a little to nudge at Bones’ calf.

“Goddamnit, Jim,” and oh, no. That tone. That put-upon tone that’s a tease and a torment: that’s never good. “I’m not a doctor!”

And the look Bones shoots is _wicked_ as he lifts off Jim, then off the bed entirely. 

“I’m a little bit of a _sadist_ , wasn’t that what you said?”

Jim’s jaw drops. He can’t even collect himself enough to _glare_. “You son-of-a—”

But when Bones is covering him from opposite ends now, he doesn’t get a chance to finish. He just gets a chance to take Bones in his mouth as Bones himself swallows Jim with practiced ease and wild abandon, and hell. He’ll rise to the challenge, he’ll accept the dare, he’ll take the leap. After all:

Jim Kirk is a man who doesn’t believe in no-win scenarios.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
